Waterboarding Doesn’t Help US, Fox News’ Mike Wallace Would Still Waterboard People

Fox host Chris Wallace reacted to a U.S. Senate investigation into the Bush administration’s torture policies by claiming he “would have waterboarded” Al Qaeda terrorist “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed myself.” Wallace’s remark came after it was reported that the investigation concluded waterboarding Mohammed didn’t provide critical information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, as defenders of the technique had claimed.

Last week the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify the executive summary and conclusions of a lengthy report about the Bush-era CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The White House will now have to approve the release. The Associated Press reported that aides and people briefed on the report said the investigation found waterboarding was ineffective.

With regard to Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, the AP reported the “Senate report concludes such information wasn’t critical” and “confirmed only what investigators already knew”:

The most high-profile detainee linked to the bin Laden investigation was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused 9/11 mastermind who was waterboarded 183 times. Mohammed, intelligence officials have noted, confirmed after his 2003 capture that he knew an important al-Qaida courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

The Senate report concludes such information wasn’t critical, according to the aides. Mohammed only discussed al-Kuwaiti months after being waterboarded, while he was under standard interrogation, they said. And Mohammed neither acknowledged al-Kuwaiti’s significance nor provided interrogators with the courier’s real name.

The debate over how investigators put the pieces together is significant because years later, the courier led U.S. intelligence to the sleepy Pakistani military town of Abbottabad. There, in May 2011, Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in a secret mission.

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Essentially, they argue, Mohammed, [senior al-Qaida operative Abu Faraj] al-Libi and others subjected to harsh treatment confirmed only what investigators already knew about the courier. And when they denied the courier’s significance or provided misleading information, investigators would only have considered that significant if they already presumed the courier’s importance.

The classified Senate report adds more support to other national security experts who have concluded that waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not provide effective information leading to bin Laden’s capture.

During an April 4 appearance on The Mike Gallagher Show, Wallace previewed Fox News Sunday by saying he’d talk about “enhanced interrogation and whether or not the CIA covered up what was actually going on. I personally, I would have waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed myself.” On Fox News Sunday, Wallace noted the investigation’s reported conclusion “that the enhanced interrogation produced little intelligence of significance.” In 2009, Wallace similarly remarked that when it comes to waterboarding, “I’m with” fictional 24 character “Jack Bauer on this.”